Craig Kenneth Harmon, 67, suffered a sudden heart attack at his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Thursday, July 3, 2014 and was declared deceased at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids.
Visitation is scheduled on Wednesday, July 9 from 5:00 7:00 p.m. at Dahl-Van Hove-Schoof Funeral Home, 1825 W. 12th Street, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613. The funeral will also be held there at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 10. Burial with military honors will follow at Cedar Valley Memorial Gardens north of Cedar Falls, on Waverly Road.
Memorials may be directed to the family in care of Dahl-Van Hove-Schoof Funeral Home.
Craig will be missed very much by his family. Surviving are his wife, Marsha; two children, Suzanne (James) Stenson OBrien, Minneapolis, MN and Matthew (Natascha) Harmon, Minneapolis, MN; one step-daughter, Kari (Curt) Rozeboom, Pt. Byron, IL; his father, C. Kenneth Harmon, Crystal, MN; a sister, Konni (Steve) Finical, Golden Valley, MN; and five grandchildren, Axel Stenson, Bradley Litz, Jr., Emma OBrien, Noah Rozeboom and Sydni Rozeboom.
Craig was preceded in death by his mother Helene Van Mill Harmon and an infant son Jon Harmon.
Craig attended Kingsley Elementary School in Waterloo, Cedar Heights Elementary in Cedar Falls, and then Peet Junior High and Cedar Falls High School (class of 1965). He married Jacklyn Breithaupt of Cedar Falls in October 1963. They were later divorced.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1965, and was assigned to the Key Largo radar station in Florida. He proceeded to Fort Monmouth, NJ for an AT&T school for the Signal Corps, a communication link between Vietnam and Washington, DC. He was later assigned to Phu Lam in Vietnam, and served a total of three years with an Honorable Discharge in 1968 as Corporal in the United States Army.
He attended the University of Iowa where he received a Bachelors of Business Administration in economics and international relations, and married Jane Ihry of Royal, Iowa. They were also later divorced.
Craig was a visionary and pioneer in technology, first at Northwestern Bell inventing the first 2400 Baud Modem, and later, with Norand Corporation in Cedar Rapids. In 1981, he founded Q.E.D. Systems, a consulting firm providing education and standards development for automatic identification technologies such as bar codes (found on packages), two-dimensional symbols such as the QR code and PDF 417 (found on drivers licenses), radio frequency identification (RFID) and real time locating systems (RTLS).
He wrote several books, articles, and papers on the various technologies. Most notably, he was the author of Reading Between The Lines An Introduction to Bar Code Technology. More copies of the text have been sold than any other book relating to bar code technology.
Craig was the recognized leader of numerous standards organizations, the founder of JTC 1/SC 31, he chaired numerous committees, founded many groups, served as a subject matter expert and expert witness, helped develop the Federal Express package tracking system. He was a well-known speaker and enjoyed traveling the world while developing international technology standards, and giving educational presentations for members of the industry he loved. His most recent foray was to harmonize the The Internet of Things, the accelerating development of connected information systems that work together in our physical world, like info systems for cars, refrigerators, home utility systems, watches, etc.
Craig will be missed throughout the industry and by his many friends and colleagues worldwide.